Careful Words

slave (n.)

slave (v.)

slave (adj.)

Base is the slave that pays.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Henry V. Act ii. Sc. 1.

Is base in kind, and born to be a slave.

William Cowper (1731-1800): Table Talk. Line 28.

I am the very slave of circumstance

And impulse,—borne away with every breath!

Lord Byron 1788-1824: Sardanapalus. Act iv. Sc. 1.

They are not a pipe for fortune's finger

To sound what stop she please. Give me that man

That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him

In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart,

As I do thee.—Something too much of this.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act iii. Sc. 2.

  No more slave States; no slave Territories.

Salmon P Chase (1808-1873): Platform of the Free Soil National Convention, 1848.

A Briton even in love should be

A subject, not a slave!

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): Ere with Cold Beads of Midnight Dew.

  No more slave States; no slave Territories.

Salmon P Chase (1808-1873): Platform of the Free Soil National Convention, 1848.

Thou slave, thou wretch, thou coward!

Thou little valiant, great in villany!

Thou ever strong upon the stronger side!

Thou Fortune's champion that dost never fight

But when her humorous ladyship is by

To teach thee safety.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King John. Act iii. Sc. 1.

Slave to no sect, who takes no private road,

But looks through Nature up to Nature's God.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Essay on Man. Epistle iv. Line 331.

Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,

Is the immediate jewel of their souls:

Who steals my purse steals trash; 't is something, nothing;

'T was mine, 't is his, and has been slave to thousands;

But he that filches from me my good name

Robs me of that which not enriches him

And makes me poor indeed.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Othello. Act iii. Sc. 3.

I would not have a slave to till my ground,

To carry me, to fan me while I sleep

And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth

That sinews bought and sold have ever earn'd.

William Cowper (1731-1800): The Task. Book ii. The Timepiece. Line 29.

Oh for a tongue to curse the slave

Whose treason, like a deadly blight,

Comes o'er the councils of the brave,

And blasts them in their hour of might!

Thomas Moore (1779-1852): The Fire-Worshippers.

  That execrable sum of all villanies commonly called a Slave Trade.

John Wesley (1703-1791): Journal. Feb. 12, 1772.

Whatever day

Makes man a slave, takes half his worth away.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): The Odyssey of Homer. Book xvii. Line 392.